World of Warcraft's Latest Expansion Is Warlords of Draenor

Meh, I was hoping for more and didn't see anything interesting. Not sure how much longer I'll have my WoW sub

I also want to say anyone who has not tried Pandaria really should. I think it is the best WoW has ever been, and the world itself is beautiful. Great story telling (I can't stress how much the voice acting improvements help here), funny moments, much improved questing, faction tag raid bosses (GW2 style encounters basically), the list goes on.

Hell the game even includes Pokemon now, with the new pet collection system. You can level and battle your companion pets, and there are hundreds of them. It is an entire game in of itself.

That is my big fear in this.

Pandaria was obviously very expensive to make, and the production quality is the highest WoW has ever had. I am afraid if they start cutting back the budget that following expansions will just not be as epic. WoW clearly is losing people, so at what point does that impact how much is spent on development?

But it's too early to tell. Those CGI movies take ages to make, so it's possible that it just wasn't ready yet for the show.

@mike17032: Yeah, WoW CGs don't show up until midway, or later, through Beta. Not really indicative of anything.

But they also said it's even harder than heroic. Not sure how many guilds are going to be ready for that. I have a feeling there'll be plenty of more casual 10-manner guilds that aren't going to be affected by mythic at all. And if they are, then I have a feeling there'll be plenty of players who get kicked out of their 25-man raids to cut them down to 20 that'll be interested in signing up.

Yeah, I agree. I really like Pandaria a lot. The monk class is a great addition, too.

These characters look like angry Skylanders.

Immediate boosting of characters to 90 is a great feature. I don't play WoW and grinding through 4 expansions worth on content to get to the current stuff would be terrible. All MMOs that have been out several years should offer this feature.

Well they've hit my BC nostalgia centers with Draenor, and I always try to pop in for a bit for each expansion so this certainly looks good to me at the moment.

If we look at the image Blizzard presented;

http://i.imgur.com/u7owHJZ.jpg

I get the feeling it's just a rename of the current heroic mode.

What Flex is now is called Normal in Warlords. What is Normal now is called Heroic in Warlords and what is Heroic now is called Mythic in Warlords, there's clearly an arrow in the middle of the graphic to show what is becoming what.

Now clearly they will be able to fine tune Mythic a lot more cause it's going to be balanced around a single size, so maybe they can make it harder or whatever, but there's still tons of 10 man Heroic progress guilds, especially over here in Europe (like the vast majority of guilds), who wont have any challenge left once they've done the Warlords Heroic (which is basically normal), they will either have to recruit or merge.

And as a veteran player yourself, you clearly realize how hard it is to gain 10 players who play on the same level as your guild requires and who fit in with the guilds mentality, let alone doing all that in a short period of time.

Personally I think that is a mistake so late in the lifespan of this game. I know my guild who is currently progressing on Garrosh heroic on 10 isn't liking the new raid size one bit and some members will possibly just quit the game, whist me and my better half will probably try to find a new 20 player home.

That said I've been with WoW since the start and I welcomed the change from 40 player raids to 25 and when 10s were put to the "same" standard as 25, we got rid of major headaches and ever since we had our stable raid progress group where we maybe changed a player or two per year, but now if we want to progress on a harder difficulty which we clearly are suitable for, we need to recruit a metric ton of players make sure they are not hit & run guys and actually fit with the group (no drama queens etc) and actually have the desired skill.

I don't know, downsizing is always easier as upsizing, thinking 15 man raids would actually be a lot better, that way 10 man groups need to recruit 5 and also 25 man groups can recruit 5 more and have two groups running. But I understand that would be the same level of bad for 25s. I think they should have just let it be 10/25 normal/heroic like it is now, and save all those good ideas for their inevitable new mmo that should come down the road, WoW is old, established raid sizes for couple years now, no need to change, but that's my opinion.

EDIT: Confirmed, that Mythical is only a name change

https://twitter.com/Ghostcrawler/status/398999535470395392

Those textures are really starting to show their age.

"boost to 90 and play immediately"

What even are MMOs these days.... why do they even have leveling any aspect of what made leveling fun in the past has been abandoned.

The new character models are a good thing.

Seems a bit lackluster on features for an expansion. New character models were announced during Cataclysm, two expansions ago, so it's hard to see that as a selling point. Feels more like a large patch without a class or race added.

I've played off and on since vanilla, but I'm only really into PvP stuff. So I'm sure this is more exciting for people that know whats going on with the story. Something, something Outland?

Best feature so far, is the free 90. Anyway I get to avoid leveling is A-Ok, I don't mind doing the zones once, anything after is just an ordeal. This is also the oddest feature considering Blizzards past arrogance, where they'd tell you what you enjoy about the game.

To me, going beyond level 100 just seems weird... Can't really explain it, not sure if anyone else knows what I mean.

I really hope this expanion isn't "Horde and Alliance teaming up together to stop the bad thing" like it was in WOTLK

The instant 90 thing seems odd to me... There has to be a caveat there or they're not giving the whole context or something..

...Wait, I thought Outland WAS Draenor? I'll admit that I've been out of the World of Warcraft since Pandaria but, I thought the Draenei left Outworld(Draenor) because shit got real fucked and Burning Crusade is players trying to unfuck it...or something. I kind of lost the plot of Warcraft long before I stopped visiting the world.

Played a tonne of this from beta through the first expansion. Glad to see that folks are still having a great time in Azeroth. What a franchise they created.

The progression guilds still left simply stop the constant recruiting for a few weeks before resuming the unending reloading phase. This was the deal when 10man became supercommon in Cata: a large break took place with the downsizing. I'd figure it's as advertised: a new activity to fit into a raiding schedule.

Same.

@rongaryen: We are traveling back to the good old wc1 days, before Ner'zhul nuked Draenor and made Outland. Cant wait to see ol' Guldan fucking shit up.

I don't care about wow that much. It never held me. But this is something I would possibly be interested in fucking around with.

Well, like I said earlier, I have five 90s already. Giving me a one-time boost will let me try out a class I've never maxed out before. I think it's a pretty good thing.

When you leveld 2, 3 or 4 characters from 1 to 90 you pretty much got enough of that. I welcome that change. You have to realize that WoW is 9 years old, it's not a fresh new game, so there's a lot of leveling to be had, especially if you are a new guy coming to WoW without any boost from heirlooms and guild perks, that why it's nice to get an insta level 90 boost, you will still have to level those additional 10 levels to 100 anyway.

Generally speaking tho, WoW leveling was never really fun, it's tons of fetch and kill quests, they try new stuff with expansions but in the end it's still fetch and kill quests. There way better questing to be had in other MMOs with a more modern approach. And WoW really starts at end-game raiding.

Warlords of Draenor would be a dope album name for sure lol

@subyman:

The CGI will get released later, don't worry :) They've always made their announcement trialers in-game like this!

The time travel aspect seems interesting. We are going back to Draenor before it was ripped apart. I wonder if there are more Cave of Time shenanigans?

I thought this was a really good trailer, even though I haven't played WoW in 5 years, seems like they're trying to recreate the magic of The Burning Crusade with the setting?

I wonder if the last expansion will still be the Emerald Dream.

Also, I think Alex has used that joke before.

I don't 'hate' WoW. I've played it myself for several years. But the last couple of expansions weren't exactly what I call 'top notch' and this trailer isn't nearly as spectacular as for example the Wotlk one. Not even mentioning that we usually should have gotten a CG trailer by now.

I wish they would just make another Warcraft RTS and make the WoW story an alternate timeline or something.

No, we shouldn't have. The reveal trailers are ALWAYS in-game graphics, and the CG trailers are ALWAYS released only a couple months before the expansion comes out.

I might have had one last chance to return to the game pending this announcement, now it looks like I can finally put it to bed. This couldn't look more generic and uninspiring.

I've had a few friends re-up thanks to this trailer, so apparently at least some people are excited about it (I was already playing)

I think it looks neat, but then, I thought Pandaria was too so I'm probably not a great judge, since most seem to agree that was not the best direction.

Seems like they're trying to get back to Warcraft 1 and 2 lore. Does this mean they've run out of story to tell?

last time i played this, level cap was 70 lol

Cant wait for it to go f2p so I can go back to it :)

That is probably a long way off though...

As someone who sat out Cataclysm and Mists of Pandaria, being able to take my level 80 Hunter straight to 90 upon release is appealing and could convince me to dive back in. Now the question is whether or not Blizzard will require people like me to purchase the two expansions between WLK and Warlords of Draenor. If so I don't see the point of the level 90 boost, since what I read has Blizzard wanting people who haven't played WoW in awhile to get back into it.

Additional I do think it looks pretty good, possibly what they should have done following Cataclysm.

Aside the motorcycles, all of that has been in Warcraft games before.

Don't people usually bitch the night away because initial previews are CGI and not in-game? I'm sure if Blizzard released a CGI trailer instead you would have found something else to whine about.

@grogenaut: You would be wrong sir, assuming you're referring to this being the last expansion. The game still has around 7.5 million subscribers, and with Titan essentially having been scrapped because it wasn't up to snuff, WoW is going to have to keep it's mothership status for awhile. There is some great, old Warcraft lore still left for the last few expansions after this one. There is Queen Azshara, and then there is Sargeras and Titans. The latter one would most likely be the last, seeing as how they can't really have any enemy feel dramatic after you fell the biggest bad guy in the universe.

@ozzie: New character models, big changes to stats and itemization, finally the item squish is coming(no more bosses with 500 million fucking health.) Lots of stuff, but overall this expansion is filler till they figure out how the hell to tackle the final two expansions in a way that doesn't leave everyone with a sour taste in their mouths.

@subyman: None of the expansion announcements came with CG trailers.

WC2 and 3 had gyrocopters. WC3 had guns, mortars, mechanical siege engines, pandas, and steam punk mech suits. Your argument is invalid.

@fminus: I'd say 99% of 10 man guilds only kill between zero and two heroic bosses per tier, so will be basically unaffected. And because the other difficulties are all flexible, instead of having between 1 and 14 players sitting until they finally reach 25, or the nightmare of trying to run two 10 mans without drama, they'll be able to keep raiding the lower difficulty as a full team until they reach 20 and can start attempting Mythic. Yes, it might kill some guilds, but those people will be able to be picked up by other 10 mans trying to convert. It'll be rough for one tier or maybe half a tier, but hopefully the encounter design improvements gained by having a single raid size to balance for will be worth it (think Sunwell).

@wandrecanada: They are actually spinning into an interesting storyline, going back to a time before Draenor was destroyed and the Orcs turned green. This paves the way for future expansions fighting the Burning Crusade directly, or facing even greater lore challenges that have always existed just off screen. Because it's not "time travel" per say but rather Garrosh the asshat basically uses the existing Dark Portal to allow for the forefathers of the Horde to come into Azeroth at the present.

@rattle618: No FTP in the foreseeable future for wow, confirmed by Ghostcrawler himself. Sorry duder, just get a sub and kill kids with glee.

@subyman: Every trailer they've EVER released for EACH xpack has been with in game assets, they don't release the CGI opening trailer until 1 or 2 months from the games release, do some research before you post about a game you don't play.

@ildon said:

He didn't say that he enjoyed any of those things in those games, or even enjoyed those games at all.

Your 'rebuttal' makes no sense. :P

edit/addendum: Oh, and now I want to play WoW again. -.- They finally added the story, guild, and character redesign content I've been wanting for many years. Damn them.

Guild Wars 2 is a pretty great game, you guys.